What men do
My father and his brother were electrical engineers.
Their natural father James W Lawson McKie had also been an engineer in Newcastle on Tyne in England and managed a firm that made electric traction motors.
He is, or was when I visited it in the 70s, recorded in the museum there as an early pioneer of wireless. He installed a substantial wireless mast in their garden but died when my father was eight.
My grandmother remarried. My step-grandfather was the Yard Manager at the Swan Hunter Wigham Richardson Shipyards at Wallsend, another engineer.
The yards built ships for the Navy during the war, three destroyers and a cruiser as well as many smaller vessels like mine sweepers, and he was nicknamed the Admiral, my father loved him and used his name, Welch, for a time.
Although both initially worked in power engineering at CA Parsons, Stephen, my father, became more interested in radio, radar and electronics as a pilot in the RAF; while Jim, his brother, joined Glovers Cables when he was demobilised from the Army where he had been a REME officer in India.
Glovers manufactured high voltage gas filled electricity transmission cables and he represented them, and after a merger, BICC, in Australia until he retired.
While both were senior managers, they built rather than bought Hi Fi systems and speaker enclosures and were generally skilled at most trades like repairing radios and cars, wiring, plumbing, carpentry and so on. My father held several patents and designed advanced electronic equipment.
They were not alone. One of our neighbours was a civil engineer who built extensions to his house; repaired his car; made very beautiful wooden toys for disadvantaged kids; and was for a time commissioner of scouting. The other neighbour was a plumber who did a bit of small scale manufacturing on the side.
My mother's father was a plumber too, as was his brother and his father, who had a manufacturing business in Newcastle. They all ran their own businesses. My grandmother's sister married a Dane who also owned a substantial plumbing business.
My maternal grandfather was a Major in the Home Guard, possibly as he had been a Military Medal winner and senior non-commissioned officer during the first war (WW1).
In his business he manufactured locally designed 'mills bombs' for his Home Guard company's use, against their possible need in the event of an invasion.
My mother's uncle Paul was recognised, after the war (WW2), for his efforts in the Danish resistance blowing up German supply trains.
As an aside, one of my mother's favorite stories was how they retreated to the basement during an air-raid only to be told by grandpa, after the 'all clear', that it was just as well they weren't hit as they had been sitting on the crates of mills bombs.
Peter and I grew up with an understanding that men could do all these things.
It came as a great shock to me to discover that my fourth class teacher did not know how to wire a three pin plug; obviously a pretence at a man.
I did very badly at school that year; particularly after a 'show and tell' when he mocked me for claiming that it was possible for a rocket to put an artificial moon in orbit around the earth; telling the class by way of correction, that the Bible makes it clear that men can't leave the earth; and God will prevent such a thing (as at Genesis 11:1-9).
But among my father's interests was amateur astronomy. I had a notebook that he used to write in when he explained things to me that included a beautiful diagram of projectiles tracing parabolic paths at greater and greater range until the arc exceeded the curvature of the earth; at which point, having also cleared the atmosphere, the projectile would keep on falling for ever. It would be in orbit. You can quite easily calculate such things as the required escape velocity; at least my father could at the time.
According to Mr Perkis (Perkins Paste), who didn't even understand Ohms Law, I was a weak-minded victim of science fiction comics, radio or movie serials. I was mocked. I was mortified. I cried bitterly.
Then I wasted the rest of the year refusing his ridiculous homework and truanting. This became easier when we were moved to an overflow classroom at the nearby Presbyterian church; the school having been unable to keep up with post-war immigration and the 'baby boom'.
I was nicely vindicated in the satellite matter too just five years later when the Russians launched Sputnic 1. By then I was in high school, on my way to University. But I never went back to Perkins Paste to rub it in his face, I just smiled: what a fool he must feel!
I imagine that by now he is gone to dust again.